The three pieces that compose the cycle "Ombres de Chimères" explore the domain of shadows in a poetic, visual, sound and political sense.

The central idea of this work is to create a sound environment in poetic dialogue with the world of dreams, elucubrations and myths. Several processes are used to musically express this universe. 

Initially, in "La curbe de l'abime" a piano and an atabaque meet in a strange sound environment, electronically processed and configured to dilute and merge the very identities of these instruments. Something fantastic, chimerical, occurs through an encounter between distant cultural and expressive universes. 

In the second movement, Le Carrousel Cassé, besides piano and electronics, voices emerge as a distant and indistinguishable sound object, deprived of its linguistic objectivity, to become pure sound matter, a "shadow of voice", or simple "expressive presence", whose meaning has been lost or is too distant to be grasped.

 Crise politique absolue!,  is a sound-visual drift that is based on anti-racist political struggles and pays tribute to its main leaders. 

Text:
La périphérie fripée des cadavres exotiques se recroquevillent sous la pression des charognards tout autour arquées,

et jette,
et propulse, 
et expulse,
et projette.

Quelques gouttes de pluies perforant la brume, aspirent la trouée, détrempent les contours, estompent les formes insidieuses,

et fond, 
et coule, 
et se tord, 
et s’extirpe.

Les poils trempés s’hérissent soudain, la ronde macabre s’accélère dans un tonnerre de râles, de grognements, la rage sustente les corps,

et vocifère,
et hurle,
et crie,
et pense.

Les chairs s’élèvent circulaires, la scène tourbillonne en un mouvement ascendant, emporte la mêlée et la hargne,

et danse,
et valse,
et se cogne,
et brise.

Au centre du maelström des chairs défuntes, tentent misérables, les esprits engourdis de s’extraire, mais s’étalent et abdiquent de guingois,

et arrache,
et détache,
et digresse, 
et dilapide,

Ainsi malgré les brisures luisantes et la langueur de la nuit apatride, les illusions chutent et fondent dans le précipice. L’œil noir englouti jusqu’aux derniers les passagers futiles, et les flots, et les vents.

Composition by Sérgio Rodrigo
Piano: Gustavo Carvalho
Text: Pascal Marquilly

Crise politique absolue (Ombres de chimère 3)

Le carrousel cassé (Ombres de chimère 2)

La curbe de l'abime (Ombres de chimère 1)

PROGRAM NOTE:
In 2019 police in Rio de Janeiro killed 1.810 people. 75% of those killed are black. Marielle Franco, Brazilian black lesbian, feminist political leader, was an outspoken critic of police brutality and extrajudicial killings. She was returning from an event encouraging black women's empowerment in central Rio on 14 March 2018 when a car drew alongside hers and several shots rang out. Police said both suspects were former members of the military police force. The Bolsonaro Government has excluded from the annual human rights report the indicators of police violence practiced in Brazil. 
It is in this context of police violence, institutional violence, and femicide that my piece TOCAR is inscribed. 
In 2020 I was selected to participate in the Academie Voix Nouvelles of Fundation Royaumont in France and was invited to write a solo for Viola da Gamba. 
My original idea was to explore the tactile dimension of the instrument, its intimate connection with the body. "Tocar" is the Brazilian expression for " to play" but it also means to touch. In this sense we say "tocar an instrument" and I believe that this expression already brings in itself the importance of the body in making music. The piece explores the percussive dimension of the instrument, searching for its integration with the voice and some performatic elements. The piece is based on a text by the African writer Hakim Bah that describes in a very particular way a scene of police violence.

Composition: Sérgio Rodrigo. Text: Hakim Bah
Premier: Eva Reiter.
Festival de Royaumont. Réfectoire de moines de l'abbaye de Royaumont. France. 06/September/ 2020.

TOCAR - Sérgio Rodrigo

NTUNDA is an expression of Bantu origin present in the languages of several ethnic groups living in the current
region of Angola and Zambia. It means both time and space.
In several languages of Bantu origin, no expression corresponds to the idea of "time" as conceived in the West,
as an abstract reality. Time is experiential or subjective, that which is meaningful to the person or thing which
experiences it.
This principle orders various African and Afrodiasporic philosophical, religious, and cultural practices, and is
also important for the understanding and study of musical practices that are related to these African matrices.
Its pertinence is not restricted to the geographical limits of Africa, and its extensions are identifiable on the
other side of the Atlantic, in cultures that were constituted on the basis of the African contribution, as is the
case of Brazil and Cuba, for example.
This piece is inspired by the philosophical principle of NTUNDA to experiment new ways of organizing musical
time and share its experience.
NTUDA is dedicated to the members of the Ensemble Voix Nouvelles.

Ntunda

Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France 
Conduction : Jiří Rožeň
Manifeste 2014, the Academy.
Paris , 2014


Praia dos Amores é um pequeno estudo orquestral baseado em algumas divagações e notas de observação acerca das águas da ilha de Boipeda, na Bahia. Essas águas, protegidas por recifes das grandes ondas e das correntezas,  chamam a atenção por seu discreto movimento, seu brilho, e por sua temperatura: são águas calmas, claras e quentes. 
Estão aí três aspectos a serem trabalhados musicalmente: o engendramento musical do movimento dessas águas e da sensação de fluidez, o  estabelecimento dos jogos de prioridade perceptiva atrelados à sensação de luminosidade, e a determinação de um enquadramento poético derivado da sensação de calor e de afetos a ele relacionados tais como a sensualidade e torpor. 


Plage des Amours – étude sur la fluidité

Cavacar, pour flûte, saxophone et piano (2023)
The cavaquinho is a typical instrument of Brazilian musical culture. Originating in Portugal, the instrument has gradually found its way into Brazilian musical practice, itself a crossroads of oral and written traditions, techniques and knowledge. Playing the cavaquinho belongs to a semantic field that expresses the very gesture that implies its performance: cavacar means to dig, to stir, to turn, to twist. It was on the cavaquinho that I began to improvise, or "cavacar", my first compositions when I was very young. Musically speaking, cavacar means activating and agitating sound material through specific gestures and techniques. Its very nature (that of an instrument with a short resonance time) favours a type of gesture that seeks permanent sonic reactivation. Rhythm itself is born of a fragile state, a kind of minimal resonance that requires a specific physical engagement. A fundamental aspect of my approach to composition lies precisely in this image, which interweaves the sound body and the human body. As a composer, I adopt an attitude of "cavacar" towards the instruments for which I write, seeking new approaches and techniques, conceiving each instrument as a medium conducive to the circulation of specific kinetic and articulatory processes in accordance with this rhythmic conception. This piece is a musical reflection on these issues and a tribute to the constellation of musical and human influences that have accompanied me on my musical journey.

Cavacar is divided into 5 parts: 1) You learned our nothing; 2) We are the invisible man; 3) Selfie with Milton, Hermeto and Moacir; 4) You exist and you are important to us; 5) Nana.

Cavacar was written for and with the members of Ensemble L'Imaginaire: Keiko Murakami, flute Olivier Duverger, saxophone Carolina Santiago Martínez, piano

Cavacar

(dedicated to Ensemble Nikel)

Inspired by the Afro-brazilian percussion universe, Pitfall intents to create a situation of temporal suspension that, such as the ritual music of these cultures, is configured through an unceasing rhythmic activity.
The piece is based on asymmetric rhythmic cells divided into 3 parts and arranged in such a way as to induce an expectation of recurrence and predictability that never materialize. Thus it creates a kind of musical trap that pretends to capture the listener in a hypnotizing sound network.

Pitfall (2015)- for saxophone, electric guitar, piano and marimba

"une étude des hommes et des choses
est une étude des lignes dont ils sont faits"
(T.Ingold)
Dedicated to Divertimento Ensemble

Fabrique de Lignes (2017)- for flute, clarinet, piano, percussion, violin and violoncello

“Colorless green ideas sleep furiously” is a sentence created by the linguist Noam Chomsky as an example of a sentence that is grammatically correct, but semantically nonsensical.
The Brazilian poet Haroldo de Campos, in his book Galaxias, appropriates this phrase, re-signifying it in describing the dance of Iansã, goddess of Brazilian Candomblé.
According to the Yoruba mythology, Iansã commands winds, storms and lightning. She is energy alive, pulsating and vibrant. She is the movement: "the goddess who sleeps dancing".
From this point of view, for someone who knows the Candomblé tradition, the sentence by Chomsky/Haroldo de Campos is grammatically correct and meaningful.
This piece, therefore, is inspired by this complex image that connects language, rite, myth and poetry. It is dedicated to Charles Silva, from Bahia, who shared with me some of the mysteries of the Afro-Brazilian drumming.

Violins: Rachel Koblyakov and Igor Zavgorodnii
Ukho Ensemble
Direction: Luigi Gaggero

Colorless Green Ideas Sleep Furiously!  - version for 2 violins and ensemble

"Human  Machines, which is to say non-functional machines, that had the same value of ancient sacred stones and remote cosmogonic citadels. And it was therefore quite logical for him to make use of those quite characteristic glyphs or signs of his to spread his particular message. And there was certainly no point in understanding these glyphs as references to ancient cultures or archaic alphabets". Gillo Dorfles about "Colonna del viaggiatore" by Arnaldo Pomodoro.

Concorso Michelle Novaro: First Prize.
Roma, December 9th 2018.
Performed by Ensemble 900 with Sara Caneva (conductor)

Human Machines

Human Machines - for piano, percussion and string quartet (excerpt)

zOOm est inspiré par la tradition de la percussion afro-brésilienne. Il se agit de une musique du rythme, de la pulsation, mas surtout de la micro pulsation, de la gestion énergétique du son et sa modulation permanente. C’est aussi inspiré par la dimension symbolique et ritualiste de cette tradition en cherchant de exprimer quelque chose d'un effet hypnotique et même d’une sensation de suspension temporale conséquence de l’hyper pulsation.

zOOm exprime une démarche d’aller à l’intérieur de la matière sonore pour trouver sa nature pulsante par une approche compositionnelle que cherche à connecter la spéculation rythmique à la manipulation du timbre.
Cette pièce est dédiée aux musiciens du Ensemble de la HEAR, à Rémi Durupt et à Daniel D’Adamo.

Composition: Sérgio Rodrigo
Direction: Remi Durupt
Ensemble de musique contemporaine de l'Académie supérieure de musique de Strasbourg-HEAR

Cet enregistrement a été réalisé dans le cadre de la 37ème édition du Festival Musica. Strasbourg 24/09/2019

zOOm

This piece is a “sonic derive” through the city of Belo Horizonte, Brazil, held in a pre-pandemic time. It is a kind of fantastic sound landscape, a portrait of a night that sought to capture something of the multiple complexities of life in the tropical south. The striking, sometimes oppressive, presence of sound and music expresses the permanent agitation of a violent daily life, which simultaneously exalts and banalizes the cycles of death and life.

b.h.z.corpos.morrentes.nas.baladas.dos.acertos.desacertos.e.correrias

Sérgio Rodrigo (Diamantina/Brazil, 1983) is a composer and multi-instrumentalist. His work integrates several creative transposing between contemporary classical music, improvisation, soundtrack and creation with technological resources. He collaborates frequently with groups dedicated to contemporary concert music, exploring also interchanges with the popular music besides projects involving partnerships with artists from literature, visual arts and cinema. Sérgio Rodrigo studied composition at the Federal University of Minas Gerais and at the Accademia di Santa Cecilia, in Rome, under Ivan Fedele. Groups such as Ensemble Intercontemporain, Radio France Philharmonic Orchestra, Exaudi Vocal Ensembel, Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, Nikel Ensemble, Divertimento Ensemble, Ensemble Court-Circuit, Ukho Ensemble, Philharmonic Orchestra of Minas Gerais, Camerata Aberta, among others, have performed Rodrigo’s music. He has participated in several composition festivals, particularly the ManiFeste and Festival Musica (France), Domaine Forget (Canada), Zeitkunst (Germany), Time of Music (Finland), Venice Biennale (Italy), International Workshop by Divertimento Ensemble (Italy),) among others. Rodrigo worked with composers such as Stefano Gervasoni, Franck Bedrosian, Brain Ferneyhough, George Benjamin, Chaya Czernowin, Yan Maresz, Daniel D’adamo, Philippe Hurel, Claude Ledoux, and others. 
Sérgio Rodrigo has twice received the "Camargo Guarnieri" composition award (2009, 2010) and the "Tinta Fresca – 2010" award in Brazil. He also received international awards in Canada (Domaine Forget Festival 2012), Mexico (Ibermusicas Prize, 2018), and Italy (“Michele Novaro” Prize, 2018 and “Maxwell Davies” Prize, 2016). 
Sérgio Rodrigo is currently doing a specialization in electroacoustic composition at the Conservatory of Strasbourg, France, with Daniel D’Adamo and Tom Mays.

sérgio rodrigo

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